Kathmandu, Dec 21: Cases of digital violence are on rise due to abuse/misuse of modern technology in our daily lives.
Towards this, stakeholders underscored urgency to adopt and implement effective measures to protect people, especially children and teenagers, from it.
At a national dialogue jointly organized by Children as Zone of Peace (CZOP) and Sathi here today, they also called for increasing the access of digital violence survivors to justice.
They also highlighted the need for the coordinated efforts among the government, security agencies and civil societies to safeguard the vulnerable communities from digital violence.
Nira Adhikari, Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Women, Children, Senior Citizens, asserted that the existing laws fail to adequately address the changing nature and severity of the gender-based violence through digital technology.
Adhikari shared that the process to amend the Domestic Violence (Crime and Punishment) Act had been taken forward.
According to her, women with disabilities, teenagers and marginalized communities were mostly affected by digital violence.
Also speaking in the dialogue, Superintendent of Police (SP) and Spokesperson at the Nepal Police Cyber Bureau, Deepak Raj Awasthi, said that online grooming, sharing personal pictures and videos without obtaining consent and digital extorting had emerged as the major gender-based digital violence of late.
Online grooming is when someone uses technology or the internet to build a relationship with a young person, with the intention of tricking, pressuring or forcing them into doing something sexual, like sending images of videos of themselves.
SP Awasthi attributed the legal weakness of not clearly defining digital violence, lack of human resources in the provincial level and 90-day time limit for the victims to register complains to be the hurdles for investigation for the police.
He called for equipping Cyber Bureau with more resources and enhancing its institutional capacity.
Intersex activist Ishan Regmi urged everyone not to understand technology as limited to mobile phones and social media.
Regmi argued that the medical technologies are being misused in sex change surgeries performed on children who are intersex from birth itself, without their consent.
CZOP’s Chairperson Tilottam Poudel dubbed the increasing cases of digital violence as a new epidemic and expressed concern over the long-term effect it leaves on the lives of the victims.
Poudel emphasized the need for the civil societies to enable environment where the victims of digital violence are empowered and can speak their mind. He also called for more investment in rehabilitation of survivors.
Likewise, National Child Rights Council’s Devi Prasad Dotel pointed out the need to further strengthen child protection mechanisms such as the Child Helpline (1098) and Child Helpline and Children Search and Rescue Coordination Centre to management the cases of violence against children.
